Unlike previously promised, the four new ferries set to be operated by Port of Tallinn subsidiary TS Laevad between mainland Estonia and the country's large western islands will not have LNG readiness, reported Estonian daily Postimees.

"Due to unclear reasons, the new ships were built with hermetic rooms for LNG containers which take up quite a lot of space, but MTU diesel engines were bought for the ship which can't be switched for LNG-fired engines," explained Heino Punab, head of the Estonian Maritime Academy's ship mechanics department.

According to Janek Parkman, a member of the board of Jetgas, the first company to launch the LNG business in Estonia, their most recent calculations show that the energetic price of diesel fuel is twice as high as that of LNG. He added that the people who commissioned the ferries likely only took into account the cost of the ferries, which would have cost up to a third more with LNG-fired engines.

TS Laevad told Postimees that the company has currently not calculated the potential cost of switching the engines of the four ferries — the Tiiu, the Piret, the Tõll and the Leiger, which are currently being built behind schedule in two shipyards in Turkey and Poland — adding that at the moment there was no reason to discuss switching the engines.